


You're a Natural Disaster

by corinneclara



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, I REPEAT NOT FLUFF, Not Fluff, a lot of betrayal and such, not sure if that last one applies but just to be safe, tyzula - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:18:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6960478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinneclara/pseuds/corinneclara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a series of seven short installments, each inspired by lines from the Pentatonix song 'Natural Disaster'. A documentation of how Ty Lee fell in and then out of love with Azula, in which they start in sunlight and end in wildfire. Mentions of potential emotional abuse, so pretty please keep that in mind!!!! <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're a Natural Disaster

i. my heart was flying in your love

They were young. That was Ty Lee's default answer, whenever she stopped to question herself, to ask why she had ever tried to love the girl raining hellfire at her side. Why she had let her walk through life as if she were its master, why she had let her walk through cities as if she were its queen. They were young, she always thought. And Azula was good when they were young, she really was. And maybe there was some truth to that answer. But there was also plenty of truth to her current tolerance of Azula's temper, so much more destructive now than it had ever been in childhood. They were young when it began, but they were not young anymore, and so her answer always remained only a start, never a complete thought. 

And maybe, she thought as she and Mai followed her across the world, she wanted it to stay incomplete. Then she would never have to think of the damage she'd caused.

 

ii. my mind was frozen in your love

It was always hot in the Fire Nation. But the heat that seared their adolescence, the kind of heat that burns away all it touches, so intense that it turns to the bright white colour of mourning, was not the heat that marked their childhood. As small nobles with limitless imaginations, who had not grown into their robes and could not yet reach the thrones they would one day take for themselves, two girls lived in a calm, comforting warmth. Wrapped in the embrace of the hearth and not the strike of the wildfire, the air leaving the same feeling as a cup of tea, they lived among splashes and soft laughter by the garden pond. Bare feet kicking up earth, flowers tied into tangles of dark hair, eyes bright with the promise of a future in this warmth - a promise that one of them opted not to keep. 

 

iii. my mind was burning in the wildfire

Sunlight scattered across the floor of the otherwise dark bedroom, two girls that were all breathless smiles and gleaming eyes sat across from each other on an enormous four-poster. Their hands were intertwined, sitting on the red sheets between them, and they seemed to be at a slight loss for words.

"That was . . . different," Ty Lee whispered, as if afraid a normal volume might shatter such heavily quiet air. 

"Different? Was it not good?" Azula replied defensively, and Ty Lee remembered that this wasn't only her first kiss with a girl - this was her first kiss. 

"No, no, it was great," she assured her, playing with the princess' thin, calloused hands. "It really was. It was just . . . softer, than it was with the boys." Ty Lee did not voice how much she preferred that softness, how she thought the boys' kisses were only rough because they wanted them to be, that they wanted to seem stronger. It was nice that Azula didn't feel the same need to assert her power. 

"Softer?" she echoed, studying the other girl's petal-part mouth, the word sounding almost too innocent to be Azula's; it lacked her usual venom, the kind that Ty Lee had grown used to having in her veins. It was the lack of such venom that let her lean closer, the two girls nearly sharing breaths. 

"It was good," Ty Lee said, not bothering to elaborate on the subject before capturing another kiss from Azula and her poisonous lips. These moments would only be good for so long, after all. A queen forged in fire could not fight a war without her weapons.

 

iv. you pulled me under with your love

They came up gasping, the air a gift that the pair accepted desperately, flailing limbs trying to keep their heads above water as the currents threatened to sweep them father down the river that had turned out to be so much deeper than it looked. 

Ty Lee glanced over at Azula, who was pushing her way to shore with determined strokes, a frown set on her delicate face. She followed quickly, not wanting to get left behind; something that was becoming more and more possible lately. The world was tense with strife, and practically every turn brought the Fire Nation to its knees in some way or another. Chasing the Avatar was the one chance Azula had to truly prove herself to her father, to avoid disappointing him the same way her brother had. Ty Lee worried that it was that determination, that need to prove herself to a man that could not be impressed, that was going to get them both killed. 

When Azula climbed out of the river and rose to her feet, she did not look back to see if Ty Lee had made it, too. When she stared out into the horizon, past the treetops and mountains, as if reading a map only she could see, she did not notice her best friend hurl herself onto shore, coughing up what felt like half the river from her lungs. And when Azula began marching further into the surrounding forests, with only a curt "Keep up!" tossed over her shoulder, Ty Lee couldn't help but think of those first kisses, and how much distance this war had put between then and now. 

 

v. i'm telling you i tried

"I was thinking maybe you should take a break-"

"I don't need your pity, Ty Lee."

It was the amount of disgust she managed to pack into her name that made Ty Lee pause, gave her reason to take a quick step back, part of her expecting an attack. Azula had been more tense than ever since Mai had betrayed her - it was a betrayal, after all. It wasn't as if Mai had chosen the righteous side, had chosen to protect those she loved without some evil ulterior motive; Azula had assured her that she must have been waiting for the moment to leave the princess unstable and powerless, waiting for her moment to strike and take the throne for herself. Mai was a selfish traitor, and Ty Lee better not turn out to be the same. 

"I just thought," Ty Lee began again, remaining a few paces away from the princess' dangerous hands, wary of the electric power she wielded like a temperamental child. 

"You were thinking? Try not to hurt yourself." The words stung, like one of the slaps Azula had been handing out like presents over the past few weeks. Ty Lee caught herself from flinching, not wanting to let on how much Azula's quips pained her. She had always had a dry sense of humor, and teasing had once been her medium of affection. The lack of a genuine smile or gentle tone was what set fire to her words, leaving burns where they would've once left caresses. 

"Right," Ty Lee whispered, inching even further away. "You're here to do that for me."

 

vi. my soul- it died from your love

It was curled up under a moonlit sky that Ty Lee really came to understand her tolerance for Azula's fury. She stumbled to her feet on the rough boards of the ship, staring out at the ocean that surrounded the vessel; it stretched endlessly in every direction, the calm currents reflecting the star-strewn sky back up at itself. They were so tiny in comparison, barely a dot on the vast blue world they skimmed above. 

What happened next was something that Ty Lee hated herself for expecting.

The hands of the guards were frigid on her wrists, which made her laugh despite herself; even the Fire Nation's finest warriors couldn't keep themselves from the bitter chill of the sea. Floorboards creaked beneath her feet, her heels dragging across the wood with a grating sound like desperation. They stopped outside the ship's cabin, and a pair of golden eyes met hers in the darkness. In the sun, they would have glimmered like precious stone; now, in the gleaming moonlight, they were as flat as her weaponized words. The spark of fire Azula so depended on to win this war, to win all of her wars, had been stolen from her gaze by the weight of nighttime. Ty Lee said nothing as her princess declared her a traitor, kept every last one of her words held tightly in the back of her throat. 

But as she was hauled down the rough stairs, descending into a consuming darkness she did not want to meet, Ty Lee glanced up at the girl she had loved so dearly as a child, the girl who had asked for a game against the world and used her as a pawn. Three words slipped out of her mouth, tumbling to the ground and coming to rest at Azula's feet. What did it matter if she listened to them or not? She wasn't saying the words to be heard; she was saying them so they could be spoken. One truth had to be spoken that night.

"You were good."

 

vii. you're a natural disaster

Trust was a difficult thing after the war. Ty Lee had been dragged through hell and back by her own - best friend? Lover? What was she to call the princess at this point? She would always stumble over that part during hearings, or meetings, or trials. There were so many people who wanted to know, who begged for or demanded an explanation. Everyone wanted to hear her speak, which was a terrifying thing. She had spent so long keeping quiet that this much focus on her words only highlighted her lack of understanding their power. So she stumbled and glossed over that detail with all the grace she could muster, trying to ignore the cracks it left in her chest.

"She wants to see you." Ty Lee had cringed at the words, nearly identical to the ones that had started it all. The ones spoken on a hot day in childhood, from the servant of a princess who wanted someone to play soldiers with. Someone she would play other games with. Someone she had shut away in the darkness, locked up for crimes that had been drawn by nothing but the imagination of a frightened girl who was doing exactly what she had always been taught: survive. 

"I know." And Agni, did she know. The thought gnawed at her insides with every passing day, the ache of her fire queen's absence something she knew she shouldn't have. She shouldn't miss the pain and the barked orders and golden eyes that did not dance in moonlight. But the laughter and soft arms and warmth that was less like burning and more like glowing - that she couldn't help missing.

But trust was hard enough with people who had not betrayed her. Trust wouldn't come back with the snap of someone's fingers, the way Azula liked most things. It would take its time, with no guarantee of ever coming back at all. So stepping through that door, the sunlight drifting through the gauzy curtains and the breeze like an afterthought of the god who had worked miracles to make that moment possible, Ty Lee was ready for absolutely nothing. Definitely not for the pink smile that met her at the doorway, or the voice that was both shattered and healing in the same breath. Not for the words Azula said, although she supposed she should've known the princess would say something; she always had to have the last word. 

"I think I want to be good again."


End file.
